


The Fallacy of Induction

by ElizabethDurham



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Big Brother Mycroft, Comfort, Relationship Problems, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizabethDurham/pseuds/ElizabethDurham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Mycroft slept together after the fall. since then, they've been pointedly ignoring the facts of their half-relationship. Then Sherlock bumps into John again, disguised, and Mycroft is faced with the question of whether he loves Sherlock enough to deny him John, or whether he loves him just enough to let him go. And Sherlock, being Sherlock, is determined not to give up either. </p>
<p>Basically, Sherlock and Mycroft reflecting on why they need eachother (as brothers as well as lovers) and the meaning of love to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fallacy of Induction

“Why am I here again?” Sherlock snagged some sort of fizzy, probably ridiculously expensive drink from a passing tray, downing it in one gulp. Mycroft rolled his eyes.  
“Because I can’t leave you alone in the flat without first informing the fire brigade.”  
“You underestimate me, brother,” Sherlock smiled. Mycroft rolled his eyes,  
“Yes, you’re right. I probably should have called MI-6 and a HAZMAT team as well, shouldn’t I?”  
Sherlock grinned, but did nothing to debunk the statement.   
“You could have conscripted Anthea,” he argued.   
“Bad form, dear brother,” Mycroft muttered, breaking off as yet another stiff-shouldered politician inched into frame, wringing Mycroft’s hands enthusiastically before melting back into thee sea of black dresses and suits.   
“What? Taking your secretary to a ball?” Sherlock snorted, “that man over in the corner? His lady’s defiantly his PA. And that’s not even the worst of it. There are at least three others with call girls on leashes, metaphorically,” He paused, considering, “well, two are metaphorical, at least.”   
Mycroft rolled his eyes,  
“Brother, you’re an absolute menace, you know?”  
“Which does beg the question of why you invited me at all,” Sherlock said smugly. Mycroft dropped the argument. With Sherlock, there was no winning.   
“Well, as soon as you find someone else like that soldier fellow, I won’t have to,” Mycroft commented lightly, smiling at an undersecretary of something or other.   
“Yes…” Sherlock mused, eyes a thousand miles away. Mycroft glanced over,  
“What is it, Sherlock?”  
“Nothing, brother,” Sherlock snapped out of his revelry, “just thinking.”   
Mycroft smiled,  
“Since when do you do anything but?”  
“Fair point.”  
They lapsed into uncomfortable silence, then Sherlock said,  
“You’re worried about him.”  
“About who?”  
“The soldier fellow. You think I should have told him.”  
Mycroft sighed, turning fully so the two were facing each other,   
“Sherlock,” he began, somewhat irritably, but not unkindly, “It is my job to take eventualities and prior data and extrapolate the results to chart a forgone conclusion. In this case, am I wrong?”  
“I always hated induction,” Sherlock muttered. Mycroft’s mouth quirked up in a little half-smile,  
“You hate the chanciness of induction, chafe at the limits of deduction. Brother dear, in this I cannot help.”  
“I never asked you to,” Sherlock spat. Mycroft shrugged,  
“Suit yourself. About the army doctor, though.”  
“Yes?”  
“You were right. I worry about him,” then, as if talking half-to himself, “I think you underestimate his attachment to you. You remember Victor. People who care for you are not simple fodder for experiments, Sherlock.”  
“Victor wasn’t an experiment,” Sherlock protested, stepping into the shadows behind Mycroft as a particularly large crowd of men and women assaulted Mycroft. When the black dresses and tailcoats had vanished, he sauntered back into his brother’s periphery vision, picking up their conversation without missing a beat, “he made his own choices. That’s how relationships go, don’t they?”  
Mycroft followed Sherlock’s lead and helped himself to a champagne, sipping it more delicately than his brother, savoring the complex aroma, then taste, “I don’t remember you giving him much of a choice, brother dear,” he commented. Sherlock looked at him questioningly. Mycroft sighed, “You own a mirror, don’t you? You can hear the sound of your own voice. If you pin someone against a wall and tell them in that voice, with that face, precisely what you want to do to them, in sordid detail, don’t be surprised if they haven’t the voice to protest.”  
Sherlock smiled briefly, eyes glittering, “and you would know, wouldn’t you, Mycroft?”   
Mycroft sighed, shaking his head at his brother’s foolishness and handing his now-empty glass to a passing servant. He had, of course, noticed how the topic had veered off from the perilous path of the fate of John Watson, and was now wallowing in Sherlock’s exterior features, but he allowed his brother the distraction. Here, in front of half of London’s executive powers, was not exactly the ideal place for that can of worms to be released.  
“Will you persist in this conversation, Sherlock?”  
“I think so,” Sherlock mused, “it’s getting rather fun, isn’t it?” He tugged at the white, ruffled collar peeking out from his black tuxedo, clearly uncomfortable in it, “it’ll be a chance to get out of this damned monkey suit, in any case.”   
Mycroft glanced once up and down Sherlock’s slim frame, taking the chance to appreciate the sight while he still could. His Sherlock was indeed beautiful, the thought to himself. To Sherlock though, he simply said,  
“In what universe does ‘black tie event’ mean ‘blood-red silk with white apples on it? This is a rather important event.”  
Sherlock shrugged, looking down at the offending tie with a twist to his mouth,  
“It was a gift. I thought the setting appropriate.”   
Mycroft pursed his lips, letting his mind fall into its familiar channels as he connected image with fact, fact with memory, memory with face.   
“Moriarty?” he finally asked, a little glow passing through him as he saw the reluctant respect that flicked briefly through Sherlock’s blue-green eyes.  
“You’re getting slow, brother,” was all he said aloud. Both brother’s mouths quirked up in identical half-smiles, and both eyes twinkled with some hidden joke. It was always like this between them. Give and take. Never let your opponent see what hid just below the surface.   
“You’re becoming just a bit bold there, aren’t you?”  
“One can do a great manner of things once dead,” Sherlock said, and Mycroft thought he caught a hint of…regret? Frustration? Sorrow? He took note of the remaining personages gracing the ballroom, cataloging their relative importance and respective likelihoods to be offended if he neglected to greet them. None ranked above a three on his internal scale. It was safe to leave.   
“Sherlock,” he began, “perhaps we should conduct this conversation somewhere else?”  
Sherlock didn’t look at Mycroft, “and why is that? Are you embarrassed of me, brother?”  
Mycroft grimaced. That was an entirely different problem.  
“Not as such, no, but we have things to discuss, and I don’t believe you would be too keen on sharing them with half of parliament, would you?”  
A moment, as Sherlock considered, then a nod. Mycroft sighed internally with relief, signaling to Anthea that they were leaving. She nodded and disappeared, probably to assure the car was waiting.”  
“No,” Sherlock muttered, straightening his suit and coat, “I’ll drive.”   
Mycroft raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment, drawing out his phone and texting Anthea:  
DRIVER NOT NEEDED. CAR OUT FRONT, KEYS IN IGNITION. NOT TO BE DISTURBED FOR THE REST OF THE EVENING.  
Mycroft’s car was a sleek black town car with suede leather seats and a walnut dash. Sherlock snorted at the opulence as he slid into the driver’s seat, shaking his head.  
“Am I not allowed some luxuries?” Mycroft asked jokingly.   
“It is quite a lot of luxury for a minor government official, brother,” Sherlock pointed out.   
“Since when would you use such a pedestrian term for my position, Sherlock?”  
“Since you started behaving like a pedestrian government squeals. Flashy car, nice suits, boring parties, need I go on?”  
“Must maintain outward appearances, you know.”  
“No. I don’t. And isn’t the entire point of your job to remain unseen?”  
“The best place to hide is in plain sight, Sherlock. Surely you know that by now.”  
“Ah, but then you give your little whispers a face, and you don’t want to do that.”  
“My whispers are capable of handling themselves, thank you.”  
“So all this luxury is the vanity of a man in power?”  
“Power corrupts; it does not destroy.”  
“Build a shoddy wall and it will fall on top of you.”  
“I am not that indiscreet with you, Sherlock.”  
“Do not mistake success for prowess.”  
As usual, their conversation, the longer it went on, devolved ever more and more into a mental argument, with only the rudimentary verbal cues to drive their thoughts in the right direction, the rest done through facial expressions, noises, or simply a mutual understanding of the other’s inner processes. A few minutes of this, and they had both fallen into silence, waging a wordless battle as each raced to reach an unassailable point before the other.   
“Enough.” Strangely enough, it was Sherlock who ended the silent fight. Mycroft looked over at him, astonished. Usually he had to fight his brother tooth and nail to force any sort of conclusion.   
“Sherlock?”  
“I said enough,” his voice was tired, pained, as though in the silent interim his thoughts had taken him through hell and back again, and he had emerged with the world on his shoulders. Mycroft reflected on John, and the fall, and Sherlock’s apple-patterned tie, and thought that perhaps that was precisely what had happened.   
They pulled up outside Mycroft’s rooms in just under ten minutes, stepping out of the car and turning it over to the chauffer who stood waiting always by he door.   
“You have a chauffer?” Sherlock teased, “don’t tell me you acquired a butler since I last saw you as well?”   
“You know how I value our privacy,” Mycroft responded primly unlocking the door and leading Sherlock inside.   
The living room they entered was large and low, the fire crackling in the grate amid a mantle of polished oak giving the entire room some sense of weight. The chairs were cream with maroon cushions, the carpet echoing the dark red. The walls were of a darker cream than the chairs, filled mostly with abstract paintings and various medals clustered together like forgotten trophies of a young boy, thrown haphazardly over a cupboard and forgotten. The glass coffee table in the center held the usual coffee-table books, mostly history related, all dull to the eye, and the windows, curtained in gold and red, helped hem the room in and give it a sense of coziness.   
“Scotch?” Mycroft asked, already pouring himself a glass. Sherlock declined, settling himself on the coach, full-length, and crossing his arms over his chest.   
Mycroft bustled around the liqueur cabinet for a moment, cleaning up, then joined his brother on the couch, gently lifting Sherlock’s head so he could ease in beneath it, then settling down with his brother’s dark curls splayed over his lap.   
“John.”  
One word. Mycroft looked down at Sherlock, whose eyes were closed, almost peaceful. He took another sip, waiting for Sherlock to finish.   
“You’re right. I underestimated him.”  
Another sip. Another pause.   
“I saw him yesterday at the Adair house, you know the one. Looking into the case when I saw him bumbling about the path, probably stamping out crucial evidence, knowing him.”  
The fond criticism was followed by a slight smile at the memory, then a deep frown. Mycroft couldn’t help but notice just how the deep creases in Sherlock’s eyes aged him perhaps another ten years. He almost looked as old as Mycroft.   
“I bumped into him. Spur of the moment, couldn’t’ seem to help myself,” the words came spilling out of Sherlock in a rush now, without their usual poised, elegant construction, a simple rush to be heard: “he apologized, of course, helped me pick up the books I was carrying. I was posing as some sort of daft old man. Don’t know why. Mycroft, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I let go of so many people when I left, why is this any different?”  
“It was different with me,” Mycroft reminded him gently.  
“Yes, but that’s you!” Sherlock burst out angrily, eyes flying open so he could glare at his older brother, “that’s you and you’re…you’re…”  
“My lover?” Mycroft supplied. He knew where this was going. Had seen it from the start. Ever since Sherlock had sent John to ask him for information on the Bruce-Partington case, then following him about as he investigated. Sherlock had been testing the poor man. And John had passed.   
Mycroft was not by nature a jealous man. He lived too much in the stratosphere to bow to the whims of fancy. He knew the hold such emotions had on people – how couldn’t he? – But it had always been on the periphery, an observer. When Sherlock had called John just before falling, Mycroft had realized what it was to be properly jealous. What it was to want to hug someone close and never let them go, because if you do, you’re scared he’ll fly away, and not return.   
“Yes,” Sherlock’s eyes were shut again, and he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, “my lover.”   
“Sherlock,” Mycroft’s voice was quiet, hesitant.  
“Hm?”  
“Do you love John?”  
But the detective was already asleep. 

There comes a time, Mycroft had heard, where every relationship reaches a crossroads. It must be decided whether you are willing to forsake everything for the sake of the person you love. If you are willing to fall for the sake of flying.   
Mycroft was looking off the cliff, but for him, there would be no flight.   
He knew, if he wanted to, he could keep Sherlock. Keep him dead, squirreled away in one of Mycroft’s many safe houses, protected, isolated, his. But then, then he would force Sherlock to that cliff, force Sherlock to give up the world for his brother. Give up John for him. Did Mycroft have the right to do that to him?  
The night air was not kind to his skin, but he didn’t care. He threw open the balcony doors and stood in his bare feet on the cold stone, staring out at the lights of London. He and Sherlock had worked so hard for this, for this city. Mycroft, to control it, Sherlock, to understand it. Together, they were its uncrowned kings. Princes of an empire that didn’t officially exist. And that was how they liked it.   
Then, of course, John had to saunter in with his crutch and his gun and his military ability to take as good as he got and throw it back. And Sherlock had been introduced to normal, and had fallen in love with it.   
Mycroft knew it was wrong on many levels what he had with Sherlock. Knew that, if ever his superiors found out, there would be no saving him. But Mycroft was not one to love easily, and long ago he had shut himself away from the world, too busy for games, too high to risk a fall. Unfortunately for him, Sherlock had made a home in his heart long before he had thought to close himself away.   
“My,” his brother’s voice was soft in the darkening evening, soft and deep and ever so scared. It sounded like young Sherlock, maybe five or six, faced with their father’s anger, crawling into My’s room with his tail between his legs, huddled in his older brother’s arms as he deduced every possible thing he could, going through person after person until he had the entire household laid bare before him, because it made him feel in control again. And as long as he could control the world, it couldn’t hurt him.   
So Mycroft had reached out, and taken control for him. Nothing would ever hurt Sherlock as long as he was there.   
And as for Mycroft, whenever someone stepped in the way of his ambitions, or someone slighted his name, or his looks, or his taste in partners (men, he had found early on. Sherlock had never liked to discriminate when it came to genders), Sherlock had been there with a bite of sarcasm and a childish petulance and an unexpected tenderness.   
Mycroft was the politician who forgot what it was to love.   
Sherlock was the solitary detective who forgot was it was to be loved.   
“Lockie, you should be asleep,” Mycroft chided, but there was no real threat in his tone.   
“So should you,” Sherlock pointed out, coming up behind his brother and wrapping his long, slim arms around his waist, pressing his face up against Mycroft’s neck and breathing in his warm, musky scent. Mycroft sighed, leaning back against Sherlock and reveling in the newfound heat.   
“London never sleeps,” he joked. Sherlock smiled. Mycroft could feel his lips turning up around the flesh of his neck.   
“Then what shall we do, to stave away the darkness?” he asked innocently.   
Mycroft spun the detective around so they were face to face, standing with their noses practically touching,  
“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” he muttered, placing a single, chaste kiss on Sherlock’s mouth before pulling away, a challenge in his eyes. Sherlock’s responding grin was nothing short of evil. The following kiss was anything but chaste.   
“Sherlock,” Mycroft gasped a minute or two later, extricating his tongue from Sherlock’s mouth, “I have one request,”  
“And that is?” Sherlock whispered, busy sucking his way down Mycroft’s neck and collarbone.  
“Inside. Now.”  
It was well, Mycroft decided later, lying in a tangled, naked heap of Sherlock and sheets, that he had not hired a butler. The moaning and crashes and Sherlock’s dramatic cries would have scandalized even the most stolidly English of servants. 

Sherlock left before Mycroft awoke, sometime between five and six that morning. He hunted through his brother’s closet for where he kept a few spare shirts, throwing one on atop his black slacks from the previous night and grabbing his Belstaff wool coat from the living room. He needed time to think. He taped a note to the kitchen table, knowing it was the one place Mycroft was guaranteed to visit that morning, and let himself out the back window, just in case the chauffer or porter, or one of the other three invisible servants Mycroft hired were lurking about somewhere.   
There was a café on regent’s street that served coffee black enough to melt asphalt, so he headed there, walking because it was cold, and the air cleared his head.   
What had been wrong with Mycroft? Sherlock had never seen him like that before. There had been a stiffness about him at first, like he was afraid to go too far, then finally, he seemed to break, and even then he treated Sherlock like some precious treasure he would never see again. It was puzzling.   
Then, of course, there was the problem of John, and his death, and what Sherlock was morally obligated to do, and what was best to do. None of which made any sense to Sherlock.   
The little café was crowded, so Sherlock joined the queue, fishing a few pounds out of his coat pocket before handing them to the smiling lady at the cash register with a smile and an order for coffee “black, two sugars.” The lady asked him what name to put it under, and Sherlock hesitated, finally giving the name “John Holmes.” He’d agreed never to give any hint of his true identity; it was too risky. With Moran still somewhere, one whisper and his entire carefully constructed death went to hell.   
It was unfair, he supposed, to leave John where he was. Unknowing. Still believing Sherlock to be dead, but what other alternative was there? John would never forgive him for what he’d done, would more than likely strangle him on sight, and Sherlock wouldn’t blame him. That wasn’t what was bothering him. He had been well aware of the consequences when he’d jumped.   
No, what was worrying Sherlock Holmes was the way he himself felt about the entire affair. It was like a constant ache in his chest, like a fire there. As if someone had tipped hydrochloric acid down his throat and this was the intense burning that occurred as the acid ate through his stomach lining and was slowly pumped through his bloodstream. It scared him. He had never planned for this sort of reaction from his own body, his own mind, and the feeling of being out of control terrified him.   
Lost in his thoughts, he jumped when the waiter called out ‘John! John Holmes, your coffee is ready!”   
He got up, still somewhat in a daze, but before he had walked more than few paces, another man approached counter, picking up the steaming cup and saying something to the waiter. Sherlock focused his ears and caught the tail end of the conversation:  
“…..John Watson.”  
“Black, two sugars?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Oh. Sorry, mate. Must have gotten the names mixed up. Some bloke came in with the name Holmes, I remember that. Not sure what his first name was.”  
Sherlock quickly ducked behind a couple kissing over frappachinos, but not quick enough that he missed the look of pain that flitted across John’s face. His John.   
“‘S fine. Common enough names, the both of them,” he muttered, shuffling back out into the cold morning before Sherlock could make up his mind whether to flee or shout out his name. 

“Mycroft?”   
“Sherlock. Was the coffee here unsatisfactory? Some people do like drinking coffee that doesn’t dissolve the innards, you know,” Mycroft said airily, sipping a cup of his own horridly weak stuff, holding a newspaper propped up in the other hand. He had a stack of twelve today; it varied between ten and twenty each morning, flown in from around the world.   
“Mycroft, I saw john again. In the coffee shop.”  
And there it was again. Mycroft seemed to seize up at the mention of John’s name, before realizing, looking at Sherlock with a sort of forlorn fondness.   
“Really?” he asked mildly, “did you talk to him?”  
“No,” Sherlock slumped, irritated, into the chair opposite his brother, sighing and rubbing his eyes. Why was everything so complicated all of a sudden? “He got his drink then left. Well, he got my drink then left.”  
Mycroft looked at him questioningly. Sherlock hastened to explain,  
“I gave the cashier the name ‘John Holmes.’ Apparently we both take our coffee the same way, and John only caught the first name.”   
If Sherlock had thought Mycroft’s strange behavior a figment of his imagination, all doubts were assuaged in that moment. There was a clatter as the posh, English gentleman let his cup fall to the saucer a little more forcefully than manners dictated, and the usually calm, unbroken visage of his face had seized up in agitation. Where before it had been but a flash, Sherlock could see the effort his brother went through to smooth out the lines by his eyes and mouth, to pull the calm, cool mask that was his mainstay back into place. And suddenly it all made sense. Sherlock cursed himself for not understanding sooner.   
“Oh god,” he whispered, “My, I’m so sorry.”  
Mycroft’s face briefly registered confusion, then understanding, then stubborn denial. He fluffed his newspaper sharply, bringing it before his face and saying briskly,  
“For what? It’s not as if I believed this could go on forever.”  
Sherlock took a moment to reflect on the fact that they had always carefully avoided the subject of long-term in this…this thing that they had. Ever since the fall, when Sherlock had turned up bloody and bruised at Mycroft’s door, and they had fallen asleep together, kissing like it was their last night, they had held some sort of unspoken pact, that whatever it was they were doing, however wrong it was, they weren’t to look at it too closely.  
“I’m sorry for not realizing sooner. The position I was putting you in.”  
“I expected nothing less,” Mycroft said stiffly. Sherlock sighed, dropping his head into his hands,  
“My, what are we going to do?”  
At this, Mycroft finally did drop his paper. He stared at Sherlock with hollow eyes. Eyes that had cataloged each possible option and had calculated the only possible solution, and had accepted it. It was his job, after all. To take eventualities and prior data and extrapolate the results to chart a forgone conclusion. That was what he did. And the result of this little…experiment…was as clear as day. He would loose his brother again. This time, perhaps, for good.  
While Mycroft was chugging through the available data, forming his conclusions and deciding the fate of their latest endeavor, Sherlock was working through his processes. Deduction working against induction. And deduction saw a different alternative. The chain of reasoning went thus: Sherlock loved Mycroft. Mycroft loved Sherlock. Sherlock loved John. Therefore, Sherlock would have to find a way to balance both. Mycroft was not a naturally jealous man. John was not a naturally jealous man. Sherlock was not interested in the sort of relationship –marriage – that required one or both participants to be exclusive. Therefore, there was no problem to speak of.   
He outlined his thinking to Mycroft. Mycroft laughed indulgently,   
“Sherlock,” he said kindly, rubbing one finger along his brother’s parceling jaw, “brother, your optimism astounds me.”  
“Well, why shouldn’t it work?” Sherlock asked crossly. Mycroft laughed again,  
“Because I know john, and even he, open as he is, will no doubt have reservations first about sharing you, then about sharing you with your own brother. Incest is generally frowned upon in society.   
“I know that,” Sherlock grumbled, “but it’s not as if my unconventionality is a mystery from John. He’s accepted the heads in the fridge and the repeated threats to his person, why should this be any different?”  
“Because it’s a matter of the heart, Sherlock, and of social taboo, both of which you have yet to test the formidable Mr. Watson against,” Mycroft pointed out gently.   
“And if he were to agree,” Sherlock asked quietly, “if he were fine with sharing me?”  
Mycroft sighed, wanting to write this off as one of Sherlock’s mad ideas, but succeeding only in giving the fluttering hope that had taken root inside his chest another foothold.   
“Then I would be a happy man,” he confided.   
“You wouldn’t be jealous?” Sherlock asked. Mycroft shook his head,  
“Ours is not exactly what you would call a typical relationship, Sherlock,” he reasoned, “I am in the unique position both of having your unequivocal attachment by way of family that then assures my second capacity as your lover to the extent of emotional attachment. Plus, I know your mind as well as I know my own, Sherlock,” he smiled a sad little smile, “I know you need a kindred spirit as much as I, no matter how much you may come to love John.”   
The glad, hopeful smile that blossomed on Sherlock’s face nearly killed Mycroft, but he held firm, holding up a hand and adding,  
“It’s an impossible dream, Sherlock. We’re brothers. You love John. There’s nothing more to say.”  
“But I love you, too,” Sherlock protested, in a typical Sherlock-esqu huff, determined to hold on to the bitter end.   
“And I love you, brother dear,” Mycroft admitted, “but there are some rules even we should not break so lightly.”  
And with that, he got up, leaving his other eleven newspapers unread, picking his coat up and walking out the door without a second glance, afraid of what he saw in Sherlock’s begging face, afraid of what he found when he searched his own heart. 

Sherlock was gone when he got home. There was a message on his answering machine, from Sherlock:  
“Mycroft. I’ve gone to find John again. I will come back, when I’m ready. When John is ready. When you’re ready. You don’t understand – well, actually, you do – what it was to finally meet and meld with someone who could sympathize with the overwhelming burden of a mind like ours. I’ve never wanted anything more than that. And I wouldn’t give it up for the world. For John, I’ll give it up for a little awhile, but only just. Please, Mycroft, be there when I come back? Be there when I need you? I know you need me, brother dear, I know you need me. Let me do something for someone else, just this once. Let me come back for you, My.”  
Mycroft listened to the message three times, then deleted it from the machine. He took a deep, steadying breath, and then shut his eyes. It was a dream. A fatal, heady dream, the iceman’s one hamartia. And he couldn’t seem to let it go.   
The government man bit his lip until he drew blood, then ran one worn finger along its length. He pulled out his mobile and clicked ‘new text message’, then Sherlock’s name.   
I CONCEED THE OCCASIONAL FALLACY OF INDUCTION, SHERLOCK. PLEASE MAKE ALL EFFORTS FOR DEDUCTION TO MAINTIAN ITS REPUTATION. -MH  
He then sauntered out into the night to find the chauffer, and to tell him that if a man with a black belstaff wool coat and a short army friend every arrived, they were to be shown in without question. If one of the men were to arrive alone? Same procedure.   
Mycroft Holmes slept fitfully that night, but at least he slept, while all of London whirled about him.


End file.
